run linux mate in sudo mode

i have linux mint with the mate desktop, and i wanted to copy a file into a folder but got "error opening file: permission denied" or "the folder cannot be copied because you do not have permissions to create it in the destination".  i remembered before that i could run mate as root or in sudo mode or something, but i couldn't remember what it was called.  so how do you do administrative tasks in mate?

when you browse the contents of a folder in mate, you are actually seeing the caja app built into mate.  so i will tell you how to run caja as an administrator or "as superuser".

open a terminal, and type "sudo caja".  boom! done.  you can do anything in this window.

if you want to run all of mate apps in administrative mode, you can type "sudo mate-panel".  i'm not sure how you're going to close your first instance of mate-panel so you might be stuck with 2 task bars on top of each other.

change date and time format of clock applet in linux mint mate

in the mate desktop environment that comes with linux mint, the clock is an applet built into the panel program.

to change the date and time format, press alt+f2 or open a terminal window.  type "mateconf-editor" and press enter.  this opens the configuration editor for mate.  if you don't have this installed, type "apt-get install mate-conf-editor" in a terminal.

navigate to /apps/panel/applets/applet_clock and click on "format".  read the long description and possibly set the value to "custom".  if you use "custom", also change the "custom_format" field, which accepts the same format strings that strftime() uses.

i set custom_format to "%F %H:%M" which displays the time in the format 2012-10-13 15:17

solution to ImportError: No module named OSRNG

i was trying to run fab bootstrap on my windows machine an received the error: "ImportError: No module named OSRNG"

i found a folder on my computer called C:\PythonX\ that had the package i needed.  i merged the contents of this folder with my python installation in "C:\Program Files (x86)\python27\"

in the end, you need to have a folder like this, but with the location to your python installation:
C:\Program Files (x86)\python27\Lib\site-packages\Crypto\Random\OSRNG